Monitoring the wrong things
05Sep08
My laser printer goes nuts when you take out the paper tray to add more paper, beeping loudly for what seems like 30 seconds at a time. However, it doesn’t make any noise or even show a message on the display when the network cable gets unplugged. This is even more annoying when you think about the relative value of these two error states. It’s quite obvious when the paper tray is out, while a network cable can come loose without any visible evidence of the problem. I wish the designers had thought a little harder about which errors actually convey useful information, compared to the ones that just tell people what they already know.
Filed under: User Experience | Closed